Swedish prosecutors dump 4,000 legal docs on The Pirate Bay

Swedish prosecutors are reportedly close to bringing formal charges against …

As the calendar pages turned from 2007 to 2008, one constant remained for the motion picture and music industries: The Pirate Bay's willingness to ignore their threats (and copyrights) to the point that the Swedish group's site has become the go-to destination for torrented content on the Internet. But there may be dark clouds looming on the horizon for The Pirate Bay. Swedish prosecutors are close to bringing charges against admins Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm.

In May 2006, Swedish law enforcement officials seized The Pirate Bay's servers and took a couple of the site's operators into custody. They were soon released, and just a couple of days later, the web site for the Swedish national police was taken down by a DDoS attack. But while the raid may have won Sweden some friends from the world of Big Content, it angered many Swedes. They were upset about reports that the Swedish government carried out the raid at the behest of the US government.

In fact, many Swedes are nonchalant about copyright, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription). A 2006 report showed that 87 percent of all films viewed illegally in Sweden were acquired via P2P networks, rather than via bootlegged physical media (France was second at 62 percent and the figure is just 34 percent in the US), and the Journal describes the country as a "file-sharing free-for-all."

The antipathy towards copyright enforcement extends far beyond the Pirate Party in Sweden. Seven members of the Swedish Parliament from the free-market friendly Moderate Party (which is a member of the governing coalition) recently penned an op-ed piece in a Swedish tabloid (English translation) calling for the complete decriminalization of file-sharing. "Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution," the MPs wrote. "It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet."

That op-ed had to send shudders up the collective spine of the IFPI, which has its own agenda for copyright reform in Europe, one that involves blocking P2P applications and filtering ISP traffic.

No worries

One group that remains unconcerned in the face of possible prosecution is the administrators of The Pirate Bay. Last November, Peter Sunde told Ars that, should charges come, he's sure of a legal victory. "I'm quite confident we're gonna win and I was expecting this to happen," he said. "[Swedish prosecutor Håkan] Roswall is also a very biased man, so I'm glad to take it to court instead of letting him dig around my personal life for no apparent reason. Actually, it's kinda funny."

Time hasn't changed his feelings on the charges, as we checked in with the Sunde. "I'm quite sure we won't be convicted anyhow," Sunde told Ars today. "[If we are], we'll just appeal all the way to the European Union court. So in five years time this might be settled."

Sunde also accused Roswall of having a vendetta against The Pirate Bay. "The prosecutor decided before the raid that he was going to charge us," Sunde said. "He has until the last of January to press charges."

According to Sunde, he and the other potential codefendants just received over 4,000 pages of material related to the investigation from the prosecutors. "He doesn't want us to have enough time to even read through the material. To compare: the second-biggest murder case in Sweden had 1,500 pages of documentation."

Even if the case is successfully prosecuted, there may not be much the Swedish government can do to put a crimp in The Pirate Bay's operations. Since the 2006 seizure of its servers, the group has made a point of decentralizing its operations; the tracker site is mirrored on several servers around the world. So even though a conviction might cost Sunde, Svartholm, and Neij a few kronor, The Pirate Bay is all but certain to keep dishing up links to movies, music, applications, and more. And, thanks to the threat of a high-profile legal action, plenty of free advertising.